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Chemicals manufacturer plans to move from Illinois to Pleasant Prairie By Alex Zank, staff writer Another Illinois company is planning to move across the state line to Kenosha County. Mundelein, Illinois-based chemicals manufacturer RealChem Manufacturing Inc. is planning to relocate to Pleasant Prairie by the end of the year.
The company will move into a 72,300-square-foot building at 7844 102nd St., in LakeView Corporate Park, where it will make liquid products such as hand sanitizer, disinfectant products and antiseptic products for janitorial, sanitation, institutional and
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Zilber Industrial 1 building at LakeView Corporate Park.
consumer markets, according to a village report. RealChem plans to be operational in the Pleasant Prairie building by the end of 2020, the report states. RealChem will hire potentially more than 100 people over the next three months. That number includes approximately 75-100 production employees and eight senior staff members. This will add to the 12 people in existing senior management roles with the company. The company is moving quickly because it is growing rapidly. Kerston Russell, managing director of RealChem, said the company started searching for a new place in August. It is now located in a roughly 30,000-squarefoot facility and needs a lot more space, he said. “We decided we needed to relocate when our business started to explode out of the seams,” he said. Its services are in high demand due in large part to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the company is getting calls from potential customers across the globe, Russell said. If RealChem seals the deal on its latest pending contract, it will have to immediately begin looking for a warehouse building, he said. RealChem chose to move across the border not for the state’s lower taxes relative to Illi-
nois, but rather because Wisconsin was the only place that had buildings that met RealChem’s specific requirements, said Russell. Those requirements included all-concrete construction, a high-efficiency sprinkler system and a developer who was willing to perform the buildout work it required. It will run two shifts from the site, with office hours between 7 a.m. and 4 p.m. Company leaders are adding a second shift to operations sooner than planned after acquiring new customers. About 25 employees will work second shift. The facility that RealChem plans to occupy was built in 2018 on a speculative basis by Milwaukee-based Zilber Property Group. Since its construction, the building has had one temporary tenant but otherwise has been vacant since March 2019. The village Plan Commission recently approved a conditional use permit, site plans and operational plans that permit RealChem to occupy the building. RealChem is a custom-manufacturing business that makes liquid products for clients on a custom or specified basis. It is capable of formulating, compounding, blending, packaging, warehousing and doing fulfillment for clients. It also provides product development, packaging design and marketing support services. n
